The world we live in is sometimes a small and coincidental place. Yesterday morning I started following film creator Timo Rose on Instagram, and within a few hours he messaged me on Facebook wondering if I was interested in viewing his latest project. Timo Rose is a writer, director, producer, editor and a million other jobs. One this is for certain – this guy loves making movies. He’s most known for Barricade, Fearmakers, Unrated: The Movie, and Karl the Butcher vs. Axe. Though I’ve only ever seen Barricade myself, I was still interested in watching the first episode of his web-series titled “Nature.”
“Nature” is about a cool guy who looks like Johnny Depp (played by Max Evans) who ventures out into the wilderness for a little retreat…and hopefully will become the first man to get convincing footage of Bigfoot on tape. He encountered the elusive creature years ago, and instead of being thankful to survive the attack, he’s on a mission to meet the cryptid again. “Nature” also featured an appearance by legendary special effects artist Ryan Nicholson, most known for “The Outer Limits,” Final Destination, and Scary Movie.
When I first started watching the first episode of “Nature,” I was skeptical. The episode starts with an opening monologue told through a video blog which goes on way too long. The episode is only 22 minutes long and the video blog goes on for about three minutes. I thought, “Wow, 1/7th of the episode is told through an oddly filmed video blog. Am I wasting my time?” Luckily, once Steve (Max Evans) got out into the middle of no where things start to pick up quickly. Mostly, I was blown away by the cinematography and beautiful backdrop that “Nature” is situated against. It’s visually stunning so I have to give a lot of applause to that department. It’s basically good enough to be one of those docu-series on Animal Planet.
It became evident during my viewing that “Nature” is not going to be geared to horror fans who want gore and nudity and crazy shit. It doesn’t look like that’ll be happening…at least not yet. More-so, I think “Nature” is going to be about mystery and suspense with a lot of character development and thematic exploration going on. It’s a horror web-show with a lot of depth to it. You’re going to have to enjoy the journey to get to the end of the destination. This is a departure from the usual stories that Timo comes up with and it looks to be working so far. Only thing I can offer is to try to focus more on the realism. If Steve is indeed being chased through the woods at night by a pissed off Bigfoot, he may have a better chance at survival if he were to actually turn his bright flash light off! Also, props to ScarMantic for the creature design.
“Nature” ends with a decent cliffhanger, one that both works towards Steve’s conflicting emotions and the viewers who want to see Bigfoot. I think this is enough to make people want to tune in for the next episode. Good writing. Good camera work. Good effects and creature design. A cameo from an icon. It’s overall a very good first episode. Shave off a minute off the opening and it would be golden. Giving episode one of “Nature” an 8 out of 10.
